Thursday, March 17, 2011

Limerick's leg is doing fantastic!

What a relief...Lim's leg is well on its way back to being 100% again. She still has an ugly wound but it's pink and clean, and should close up soon. More importantly, the swelling and heat is almost entirely gone.

She can't be turned out until Monday, maybe Sunday (depending on the wound) and I have to keep her leg wrapped until then, but the penicillin injections are finished and I'm finally taking her out for short walks.

(speaking of those injections, she was a complete model patient for me! Each time I gave them to her, she stood perfectly still and waited patiently for me to finish. You need to inject them very slowly, so these injections aren't over with in the blink of an eye. What a goooood girl!)

Lim's leg on March 11--compare the area belowher knee to that of her normal right leg.

Lim's leg on March 16

The traditional "Thoroughbred gaze" momentsbefore she decided to do some acrobatics

Last night Limerick decided to show me just how much better she feels! I took her down to the grazing strip and all was well--she would graze, lift her head high and focus on some faraway point, then repeat. Nothing out of the ordinary for her.

But after a few moments I heard what I guessed was a dog barking (I found out later it was a small pack of coyotes, which are common around here) and Lim completely flipped out! She flung her head straight up, snorted, and went into a lovely capriole. It was like my mare had invisible rockets on the soles of her hooves--I barely even saw her move before she launched herself three feet into the air, her hind legs kicking back in unison with each leap. She did it again, focused on some faraway object I couldn't see (snorting and blowing like a bull all the while), then threw out a few more caprioles.

Finally, she settled down for a second and threw her head down again for a hurried bite of grass, then without chewing, flung her head back up again and snorted at the same faraway object. Abruptly she then pranced and cantered in place around me, the whites of her eyes flashing. Greatly amused, I tried very hard to reach for my phone so I could record the whole thing, but any move I made was greeted with a lot of dramatics and airborne moves on her part.

I couldn't stop laughing!

Finally I had enough. The last thing I needed was my injured horsey getting away from me and galloping off at top speed.

"Alright girl, time to go back to the barn, huh?" I said. With a little difficulty, I managed to move my prancing, piaffing, flag-tailed, snorting mare over to the driveway. She alternated between a prance/piaffe combo and a super-slow, high-kneed canter the whole way up the barn driveway, neck bowed, nostrils huffing and puffing. I had to circle her every few paces to slow her down.

There is a massive pothole in the driveway and when we reached it, she stopped abruptly, splay-legged, and snorted at it before launching herself over it in a tidy leap, knees tucked high. Of course, this made me trip over the pothole, and in response she threw herself into a frenzy of bucking bronc/Lipizzaner moves. I did my best to not laugh too much, lest I startle her even more and lose my grip on the lead shank.

About Heidi

I have always been inspired by the beauty of Thoroughbreds, and my best muse is my off-track Thoroughbred mare, Limerick (registered as Amanda Bry). I live in the Chicago suburbs with my husband and four cats, and I am a writer for a local business and a freelance photo essayist. Follow me on Twitter at @AmandaBry91